Alfred Landecker

Alfred Landecker's life illustrates the fate of the vast majority of Jewish people in 20th century Germany at the time. From rural eastern Prussia to an industrial city in Germany's southeast: shortly before the start of the First World War, Alfred Landecker decided to make a considerable leap. Raised in a large Jewish family in the town of Nordenburg, as a young man Alfred left the area for Mannheim. After years on the Western Front, he worked as a business representative in a machine factory, became acquainted with his future Catholic wife Maria Geßner, and started a family. In 1928, Maria died. Subsequent Nazi persecution from 1933 would place Alfred and his three children – designated »half Jews« through the Nuremberg Laws – in a hopeless situation. In 1942, Landecker was deported »to the east« and murdered. »Times change, and with the times, people change as well« he had written four years earlier in a letter to his daughter. This biography describes how »changed times« intruded into ­Alfred Landecker's life and destroyed it.